Gnome-shell using 8Gb ram

Rocky Linux Tech Help
1

Hi there, have you guys noticed gnome-shell using many gigs of RAM? I suspect this builds up over time as this clears after reboot.

Seen many similar reports on various sites and there are two things suggested -

  1. extensions - which I don’t have and
  2. switch from x11 to wayland - which I believe is the default.

This is on rocky 8.5 / frozen on kernel 4.18.0-348.23.1.el8_5.x86_64. Updating this box is super tricky but if this is a known issue / there is a version that fixes this I can go through the ordeal.

2

How are you measuring it, and does it go to zero when you log off? I’m assuming you don’t leave it logged in.

3

Updates are always recommended. The latest version is Rocky 8.10. All Rocky 8 versions prior to 8.10 are now unsupported.

Therefore, the first thing to do is update your system.

4

Hi - thanks both.

I am looking at top output. Perhaps there is a better way? Also, I didn’t spec gnome-shell version which is gnome-shell-3.32.2-40.el8.x86_64 on this machine.

When all sessions are closed I get this:

1918 gdm 20 0 3456516 86044 41012 S 0.0 0.1 46:10.75 gnome-shell

Perhaps I am reading this wrong, but to me this reads like 3.5G of RAM.

Then after login I see

2900830 ivan 20 0 8918996 347860 115600 S 0.7 0.3 0:04.18 gnome-shell

Again - if I am reading this correctly, this is near 9G. By flipping between these two states, I was able to (naively) verify that free reports this memory as “used”.

I can see the same behaviour on Alma 9.3 with gnome-shell-40.10-14.el9_3.x86_64 (kernel 5.14.0-362.24.2.el9_3.x86_64) so likely not Rocky specific.

Thanks

5

No that’s the VIRT value, you want to be looking at the one under RES which is most likely 86044 and later 347860.

Therefore, I don’t think you have a problem at all TBH.

6

It does use quite a chunk of “memory”, but it seems normal. As you already have Gnome, you can use “System Monitor : Processes : gnome-shell”, then right-click and properties. It shows a breakdown of all the different types of memory. I supposed being a full featured desktop it needs to have a lot of data ready to page in and out.